Former Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz and former entertainment reporter Anita Busch took the stand on Wednesday in the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping trial and shed new light on their business with the onetime private investigator.

Once a top talent agent and later president of the Walt Disney Company, Ovitz revealed in court that he paid Pellicano $75,000 in cash to get embarrassing information on Anita Busch of the Los Angeles Times and Bernard Weinraub of the New York Times, who were writing "wildly embarrassing" stories about him and the film production company he cofounded, Artists Management Group.

"I wanted to know when I was going to be ambushed, when the next shoe was going to drop," said Ovitz, describing a period in 2002 when his attempt at a Hollywood comeback was collapsing, hastened, he believed, by Busch’s articles. Although desperate to find out how the reporters were getting the private information, Ovitz insisted that he had no idea Pellicano was actually breaking the law.

"I never instructed him (Pellicano) to do anything illegally," Ovitz addressed the Los Angeles jury during his one-hour testimony in the trial of the so-called private eye to the stars.

"It was an extraordinarily difficult time for me and the company," said Ovitz, whose stints in Hollywood include founding Creative Artists Agency. "We were in a state of negative press, fueled by rumor and innuendo...All I wanted was a graceful exit from the business."

Taking the stand immediately after Ovitz, Busch broke down repeatedly as she testified about what she said were threats on her life orchestrated by Pellicano. She recounted a series of events in June 2002 consisting of threats that prompted the Pellicano investigation: a fish and a rose left on her car, next to a note saying "Stop" and a bullet-like hole in her windshield. Busch said two men in a dark Mercedes nearly ran her down outside her own home in August 2002. "I remember thinking I was going to die," a sobbing Busch revealed. "I thought, ‘This is how it ends.’"

Prosecutors allege that Pellicano wiretapped, harassed and obtained confidential information about one of the reporters, and her complaint to authorities became the flash point of a five-year scandal that has fascinated Hollywood, culminating in his federal trial.